Desborough Castle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Desborough Castle is an Iron Age hill fort which lies on the southern side of the valley of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, which runs through the Chiltern Hills from the river Thames to the Vale of Aylesbury and the Ridgeway.

The castle was constructed by the Saxon population to monitor of the Danish invasion.

It consists of a Norman ringwork, partly overlying a mound, possibly a barrow reused as a Saxon moot. Both lie within a square enclosure, possibly an Iron Age or Late Bronze Age settlement or stock enclosure.

This valley has always been an important communication route, and has had a known trackway running through since the bronze age. The fort lies within what is these days a landscaped grass area, just below the Castlefield council estate and looks over High Wycombe.

[edit] See also

• Wycombe
• History of England

[edit] Sources

From: 'Parishes: West Wycombe', A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 3 (1925), pp. 135-40. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=42540.